If we look at contemporary successful entrepreneurs, it is their innovation which is responsible for their success. What is needed is the inner spirit among the Muslim entrepreneurs to excel and innovate.

• Postman Cooking oil, once a brand leader in its category from Ahmed Oomer Oil Mills is dead. Because of the family dispute, the Mill is locked.

• Delhi Darbar, the famous chain of restaurants recently split into two groups affecting its overall business.

• Kazi Mohalla Timber Market, dominated by Muslim entrepreneurs is now reduced to couple of timber shops.

• Monginis Foods Ltd, the pioneers in the cake and pastries business in Maharashtra, is today stagnating.

• East-West Airlines, pioneers in the private sector Airlines closed down.

Muslim entrepreneurs are finding the going tough in the face of tough competition. Even the Akbarally’s chain of stores, once the pioneer in the super market category is today going slow. The single most important reason for the decline of the Muslim entrepreneurs in India is lack of innovation. According to the Management guru, Peter Drucker: “An entrepreneur is one who always searches for change, responds to it, exploits it as an opportunity. Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is a speci-fic instrument of entrepren-eurship.”

If we observe the contempo-rary successful entre-preneurs, it is their innovation which is responsible for their success. Be it Google, Virgin or Starbucks, Ebay, all of them are today the Fortune 500 companies because of their innovation. Most of the current Muslim businesses are managed by the second generation entrepreneurs who lack the burning desire to excel and ambition to set high standards.

David McClelland has developed an Achievement Motiva-tion Theory. Accord-ing to this theory, an individual’s need for achievement refers to the need for personal accompli-shment. It is the drive to excel, to strive for success and to achieve, in relation to a set of standards. People with high, achievement motive like to take calculated risks and want to win. High achievers are not motivated by money per se, but instead, employ money as a method of keeping sure of their achievements. Such people strive for personal achievement rather than the rewards of success. They want to do something better and more efficiently than has been done before.

Most of the current generation of the Muslim entrepreneurs had a ready-made empire inherited from their parents. Hence they lack the inner spirit to excel and set high standards. Need for achievement is simply the desire to do well not so much for the sake of social recognition or prestige, but for the sake of an inner feeling of personal accomplishment. It is this need for achievement that motivates people to take risks. People with high need for achievement behave in an entrepreneurial way. Need for achievement stimulates the behaviour of a person to be an entrepreneur.

No doubt, the world over, the family business model is successful. In fact, families rule the world of business. Their firms make up more than 2 out of 3 companies across the globe and employ over half of the world’s industrialised workforce. They produce 65 per cent of the Gross National Product in the United States. Their names are some of the world’s most famous brands… Marri-ott, Disney, Ford, Nestle, Anheuser Busch, Ferr-ari and Levi Strauss.

Family businesses are leaders in their particular industry (think Washington Post, Dell, Johnson & Johnson). When compared to their non-family competitors, they are more than 5 per cent more profitable, achieve higher annual revenue and income growth, provide higher annual shareholder returns and are valued 10 per cent higher by the equities markets.

Family business leaders are often the best and brightest executives in their industries. They run professional, innovat-ive, aggressive companies that expand the horizons of producti-vity and efficiency. J. W. Marriott, Jr. for instance, succeeded his father as CEO of the Marriott Company in 1972 when revenues were nearing US $200 million. Today, in the twilight of his career, Bill Jr. leads the US $9 billion, 140,000 employee international companies. Under “Junior’s” guidance the company grew to 45 times the size of the company his father passed on to him.

What is needed is the inner spirit among the Muslim entrepreneurs to excel and innovate. This ‘inner spirit’ which McClelland called need for achievement, if higher, would produce more energetic entrepreneurs capable of generating rapid economic development. High need for achievement or ambition motivates an entrepreneur to take risks, work hard, find new things, save more, re-invest the savings in industry, and so on.

McClelland rated the achievement motivation of different countries on the basis of ideas related to need for achievement contained in the children’s stories. McClelland found that achievement motivation was lower among people in under-developed countries than among those of developed nations. It is the level of aspirations or ambitions that explains the lack of enterprise among the Muslims.

Thus, the community needs to re-look at its literature and go back to the golden era when Muslim traders were the most successful. We need to coach and train our children by exposing them to the stories of those who have made this world a better place to live.

(The writer can be reached at mh1964@rediffmail.com)

Muslim Perspectives